APRIL 14, 1942

NEW YORK, Monday—Last night I called Franklin, Jr., at his home, to find he had just been taken back to the hospital. So, this morning, after breakfast, I started to move and visit on the same trip! I left some pictures at the new apartment and then went over to the Naval Hospital and found a very irate young man who felt the fates were indeed against him.

He evidently picked up a cold from his small son, which developed into sinus and a temperature, probably because of lack of resistance, caused by his operation and slight touch of pneumonia. I hope this time he will return to his own home today.

For those of us who travel by air, that was sad news in the paper yesterday! It has been hard for the airlines to meet the demands of passengers up to now, but with one-fourth of the air liners taken over by the Army, it will mean, I imagine, increased difficulty for civilians who wish to travel by air.

Gradually, we shall have to take more time to get about when we are not doing something which has to do with the war. If we civilians must travel, it will be in a more leisurely fashion. This will be a hard lesson for me to learn, but I feel quite sure that, like many others, I can.

Last night I read an interesting suggestion, which was sent to me by Mr. Joseph E. Goodbar. The plan will go to the Treasury Department, but the idea is simple enough for all of us to understand. He feels that by using a new type of taxation, we can not only meet the extra demands made by the war, but private industry can be better prepared to reabsorb people back into civilian life.

Mr. Goodbar calls this tax "a pay with added production tax." He looks realistically at all of us who are taxpayers and says: "We will be required to create an incentive that affects every gainfully employed person and every person who receives an income, otherwise some would respond and others would not."

So he suggests that "all of us be taxed 25 percent on all income from whatever source derived," but that, "every taxpayer able to do so, be allowed to increase his productive effort 25 percent; and this tax would be paid out of extra emergency war production and not by an increase in his normal income."

Just how we are to succeed in getting the opportunity to become more productive has been worked out by him. I shall be very much interested to see what the experts think of his idea.